Maureen Dowd and the Left: All Race, All the Time

Does anyone grasp that this obsession with racial identity in an increasingly multiracial society is outright insanity, both politically and culturally? -- Victor Davis Hanson

Any conservatives who believed that our nation’s unofficial pastime, “All Race All the Time,” would become passé with the election of Barack Obama were proven wrong just minutes into his inauguration. Despite the presence of the racially mixed Obama eagerly awaiting the award of the mighty pen of power, yet another of my former senator’s race-obsessed pastors encouraged white Americans to “embrace what is right.” One would have thought we had already done so, but the joke was on us. It seems justice in the present can never transcend sins of the past. Sins, of course, that none of us alive were alive to commit.

Not even a month into the 44th presidency, Attorney General Eric Holder compounded the insult to rank-and-file Americans by informing us that “in things racial” our country remains “a nation of cowards.” How ironic as were it not for white guiltistneurotics, Obama would still be playing Class A ball in the Illinois senate.

How our country got duped into elevating to the highest office a far leftist whose views are out of touch with those of the average citizen still perplexes, but Mr. Holder must be pleased by the efforts of this particular conservative to address race relations.

During the recent hullaballoo over the New Black Panthers we discovered that the real racists were not the men who shouted incendiary racial threats, but instead those at Fox News who dared to make known the Justice Department’s corruption.

This event was followed up by Breitbart-gate in which the man behind BigGovernment.com showed a clip of bureaucrat Shirley Sherrod giving a speech that acknowledged past discriminatory behavior on her part.

Unfortunately, the portion of the monologue he used was out of context. This resulted in the mediaattacking Breitbart en masse. Their goal was to discourage the right from ever again identifying incidents of black racism.

They denounced Mr. Breitbart as a racist (yawn). They claimed that he “fooled America -- again.” A one-word response suffices: poppycock. A perusal of Mrs. Sherrod’s entire speech reveals that she is what we originally suspected: a dedicated race baiter.

She equated Republican disagreement with President Obama over the issue of socialist health care with racism.

Specifically she proclaimed:

You know, I haven’t seen such a mean-spirited people as I’ve seen lately over this issue of health care. Some of the racism we thought was buried. Didn't it surface? Now, we endured eight years of the Bushes and we didn't do the stuff these Republicans are doing because you have a black president.

We clash resoundingly with President Obama on most issues. We especially reject the notion that “our individual salvation depends on collective salvation.” In fact, the opposite is true.

While it is helpful for Mrs. Sherrod to articulate her dysfunction and irrational resentment towards 42 percent of the electorate, justifications for conservative positions are not actually necessary on this occasion.

Mrs. Sherrod’s claims are risible at the prima facie level. Race is irrelevant in regards to health care, and we know this due to the two-year donnybrook waged against the Clinton administration’s attempt to initiate universal health care during the early nineties.